No year in the past four has carried this much weight for the Canadian women's volleyball program. Ranked 11th in the world, Canada will play 12 Volleyball Nations League games over the next six weeks in hopes of snapping a 28-year drought in Olympic qualifying..
On Monday, the team unveiled its 14-athlete roster for next week's first stop in Rio de Janeiro. "Excited is probably the wrong word.
Everything feels really heavy right now," head coach Shannon Winzer said last week from Richmond, B,C., before the team left for Brazil. "Obviously we're excited to go to the Olympics, but we're in a pressure cooker.
We're in a high stakes environment right now. Even though our team feels a sense of urgency, everyone is really positive. We know we can qualify, but it's a lot of work." The group has grown and progressed the last few seasons under Winzer.